


Hurricane (io x Ares)

by Astrothaut (SyntheticAngel), FullSizeRender



Series: Character One-Shots, Etc [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Autoerotic Asphyxiation, Consensual, F/M, Hurt, Mostly hurt, Outer Space, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, Sexual Content, Shameful smut, Smut, mutual hatred, original - Freeform, scifi, space, strong emotions inbound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:55:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25473463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyntheticAngel/pseuds/Astrothaut, https://archiveofourown.org/users/FullSizeRender/pseuds/FullSizeRender
Summary: (Self-indulgent smut with characters in heavy conflict.) io faces Ares one-on-one and they get a little too into it. Warning, because it isn't nice, but it is consensual.! This isn't canon, but an idea/character exploration !
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Series: Character One-Shots, Etc [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1810666
Kudos: 2





	Hurricane (io x Ares)

_ “It’s just going to be you and him. Will you be alright?” _

io swallowed but couldn’t get rid of the tightness in her throat. Isotech columns at the pearly doors loomed over her like white sentinels, but not the kind that she liked. She couldn’t be impressed with these colony ships, not when they appeared over doomed planets like harbingers of death. A white angel dangling its scythe over a sentenced head.

_ “You can do this! If anyone can do it, it’s you!” _

The doors slid open automatically and io squeezed the handle of her plasma pistol with bloodied fingers. Nobody stood guard. She expected more guards, even after the amount she and her crew took out before getting here. This wasn’t a regular raid, though. She knew  _ he  _ was here; her suit pulsed with the recognition, like separated dogs picking up a familiar scent.

Soul mates, destined to meet again but always for the wrong reasons.

_ “Jusssst sssstab him in the throat. Easssy.” _

io wiped her mouth of saliva or blood, she didn’t care. The place was too quiet. She strode forward with black fire in her eyes, scanning for life. An open and empty common room, overlooking space. Her suit was awfully quiet too. She narrowed her eyes at a closed door.

_ “Do whatever you have to do.”  _ Rinzler’s voice echoed in her head. Her finger quivered on the trigger.

“Aaron!” Her voice cracked. She aimed her pistol at the door. “No more! It’s just me, and you. Isotech doesn’t get to destroy any more planets.”

“Spare me the heroic bullshit io, acting all holier-than-thou doesn’t suit you.”

The lights in the common room slowly came to life like stage lights, revealing a smug Ares leaning against a metal desk. The crimson highlights of his suit pulsed rapidly, like a visible indication of his heartbeat. His arms were folded tightly across his chest. Even his toothy grin seemed a bit too tight, too wound up.

He was ready.

“I’m gonna tell you how this is gonna go. You’re gonna miss the shot, you’re gonna puncture the hull and we’re gonna go sailing into space. Just put the damn pistol down.”

“ _ No _ .” She growled, and aimed it directly at him. Her fierce stare locked onto the bright red of his hair, down his suited silhouette. His suit was  _ exactly _ like hers, accentuated his lean muscle and squeezed his thighs. Every time she saw him, he changed. Sunken eyes, pronounced cheekbones, a wicked twist in his smile. A far cry from the brilliant but soft-spoken engineer she knew on Earth. The Aaron before her was a bastardized transformation, dunked into nuclear waste and oozing with radiation. She, too, felt radioactive around him.

io stamped forward and shot a warning near his feet. The spot eroded like an acid spill, glowing plasma bubbling at the edges.

“I didn’t want to  _ fucking _ do this, but here we are! If I don’t then you’re going to kill more people. I don’t know who you  _ are _ anymore,  _ Aaron _ .”

The immaculate chrome floor bubbled and fizzed near his feet, but Ares hardly moved a hair. His eyes narrowed slightly as io stormed forward, brow furrowed with deep thought before they shot back open - a silent realization.

“What is this ‘appeal to my humanity’ bullshit? Do you think you can honestly claim you  _ knew _ me? At any point?!” Ares pushed off from the desk and opened his arms up, a taunting gesture of welcome. 

“C’mon, you disingenuous bitch. You used me to learn shit your little backwater-ass town wouldn’t let you. Then, after I gave you a second chance at life you fucked off for some merry little romp through space rather than even trying to show some gratitude.” He snorted obnoxiously and spat through the smoldering plasma hole. “I’d rather you just swing at me than pretend you were ever my friend. Saves me a headache.”

She sucked in a sudden breath and disbelief seized her. io lowered her gun. Her empty open hand flew up and her palm met hard with his cheek.

Shock. “ _ Pretend _ ?!” She screamed, shaking with fury. “I didn’t pretend  _ anything _ , you had this idea of me that you couldn’t  _ get past _ once I stopped acting the way you wanted me to. I’m not talking about this again. You know what I’m here to do.” She snarled to his face, the hurt, guilt, anger as fresh as it had been the first time they reunited. She pulled her gun up. 

His smile faltered briefly as her palm collided with his face, but quickly righted itself as she barked at him. He purposely left his jaw open for another slap, but all she had for him was empty words about  _ his  _ lack of understanding. All he heard was that io had a sense of entitlement so strong that she couldn’t even follow some simple instructions to say thanks for being rescued.  _ io simply doesn’t get it _ , he figured.  _ Women never did. _

“Wow, that one almost felt like you tried, io.” He jeered. Sharp eyes caught the materialization of her trusty sidearm, and his smile dropped entirely.

“What did I tell you,” Ares swiftly backhanded the plasma pistol from her hand then brought his other hand up and palmed her face, fingers digging tightly into her scalp, “about the fucking gun, io?!”

He cocked his arm back before shoving her back into the hallway. He leered at her as he corrected a few strands of errant hair, astray by the slap.

“Honestly. You’d think that you’d have learned by now that not listening to me makes things worse. Keep this up and I’ll just have to break you into obedience.”

“ _ Fuck! _ ” She hissed and her plasma pistol vanished at lost contact. She fell back, colliding with the floor. Between the spite and bitter readiness, it didn’t hurt too much. Her hands pushed her back to her feet. Who was he to shove her around so much? Who was he to her anymore? Weeks and months of flying between solar systems taught her so much. Having to kill alien attackers in self defense and navigate while stranded on empty planets strengthened her. And now outer space’s trials brought her to him, to end the game. 

She flicked her wrist and in her hand a short sword crackled to life, the same color as the plasma shot. io saw its reflection in his sneer. Isotech had let him become a mercurial warlord.

“You just have to control everything, don’t you?” She said, and lunged at him. The sword dragged across the floor, sparked against the chrome, before she swung up and missed him. Not entirely. She caught his suit, seared the material and reached his chest underneath. She drew back and saw the certain drip of blood. Her eyes met his as if to say  _ I’m going to make you take me seriously _ .

Because his io was gone, too. Earth was,  _ and soon so would he _ . She sprung forward with her sword drawn back.

“Son of a bitch-“ Ares hissed as the plasma seared his flesh. Even with a halfway-decent lurch away from the bulk of the blade, the proximity of the super-heated plasma was enough to leave a nasty gash that was quickly cauterized. A drop of blood managed to free itself from his chest, but the pain surged through his body like a wildfire.

He only had a moment to catch his breath before she lunged at him a second time, but he wouldn’t allow himself to be caught off guard again. Plasma blades of his own shot out from his wrists to deflect io’s second strike, swatting it off to the side before thrusting them forward to stab at her chest.

“Got a little bite in you, huh?! Good, now I won’t feel bad when I rip the implant out of your spine!” He screamed, wide sweeps of his blades slicing through the walls of the hallway as he pressed forward to keep io on her back foot.

She gasped, no time to snap back at him.  _ Like you’d have felt bad anyway _ . io staggered back to avoid the swings, narrowly dodging the hissing blades that could sink through her like butter. Fights with Ares were always high stakes. His weaponry and armor were the same as hers; pitted against each other, they might as well be naked.

io’s heart pounded against her chest, fear and determination surged through her veins. They went back and forth and she held her ground. He clearly knew what he was doing with his suit, always just a little faster and more ruthless in their past face offs. The fire in her eyes burned brighter at the memory of his ‘sparing her’ so many times before. Not this time.

She waited him out. Waited until he was taking longer pauses between his swings, and he couldn’t bring himself to smile, however villainous. He would have to be tired for this to work, because  _ neither _ of them would get to use weapons after this. 

io’s sword vanished, her breaths labored, and she stood with feet wide apart. 

“Pulse field!”

Every light flickered out the second the magnetic wave blasted through the room. Chairs shattered against the walls, her suit LEDs held on by a dying glow. 

_ Now. _

She pushed her aching body forward and straddled him on the floor. The shock of the invisible explosion was her advantage; maybe he didn’t know she learned how to use it, too. io wasted no time wondering when she slammed one hand over his chest and balled up her other fist to strike him.

_ Careless. _ The ringing in his ears as every suit system failed was deafening, but not louder than his own criticism. His eyes fluttered as he collided with the ground in preparation to completely lose consciousness, only to jolt back to life as io’s fist collided with his freshly sealed wound.

“Hah, shit...maybe...I misjudged you.” He wheezed, struggling to catch his second wind. He had gotten complacent in the suit, too used to its luxuries that existence without it almost wasn’t worth it. “Took a cheap shot...looks like you’re...finally fighting.”

“Because I’m not here to fight.” She punched him with scraped knuckles, square in the nose, a solid connection that stung her just as much as it probably did him. She shook her hand out and almost felt bad. Almost. “I’m done fighting. I’m done chasing your fucking shadow and what’s left of the planets you and Isotech are finished with.”

Her hand grabbed the collar of his dying suit. She had never had the upper hand before. Blood dripped down his upper lip. This was the man that made several efforts to have her and the rest of her crew killed. This was her moment of reckoning, for Earth, for the dead, for attempting to reprogram Rinzler against his will.

“Fuck you.” She struck him again.

He laughed.

Through each solid  _ crack _ of her fist against his rapidly deteriorating face, Ares let out the heartiest laughter he could muster since he left earth. She was right, he had definitely blown through a few planets - and nothing in him regretted it. All a means to an end, or so the nagging whispers in the back of his mind told him.

The taste of copper began to well up in the back of his throat. io pulled her fist back for another uncontested blow and Ares spat with the strength he had left, the slimy saliva and blood mixture stuck to the grime on her cheek.

“God even when you have the upper hand, you fucking suck. Your speeches are worse than your punches.” He howled with self-satisfaction, his deranged delight echoing through the empty halls of the cruiser. “Gonna talk me to death? That your plan? I’m halfway there, maybe just tell me more about how sad you were when you watched Earth implode. That’ll do it for sure.”

“Shut  _ UP! _ ” She screamed. It was clear hitting him was doing no good. Her hands clasped around his neck instead, thumbs pressed into his throat. “Shut up! Stop  _ fucking _ talking!”

Her humanity lost its feeble grip as hers tightened. It cried in its dark corner, clawed at the door of her consciousness. He was just a man beneath her. This was it. She could kill him. She just had to keep holding. 

“ _ Do me a favor and die. _ ”

“Hah! Ahahaha!” He choked out, weakly gripping her wrists in a pathetic show of resistance. Blood rushed throughout his body as he struggled for his last few seconds of life. But even with her hands wrapped around his throat his mind briefly wandered onto an unforeseen strong sense of...eroticism? His life was being snuffed but he reveled in the raw, primal showing of force above him. Having an unexpected erection hardly seemed like the thing to focus on right now, anyway. “You think...you can do it?! After you failed time after time, planet after planet?!”

“I  _ SAID—” _

She froze, jaw tensed and mid-snarl. Her hands stayed firm on his throat but the squeezing stopped. She shifted in angry confusion. An unexpected stiffness against her inner thigh confirmed her suspicion.

Disgust washed over her features. This was an entirely new level of  _ filthy _ , even for him. Despite the sick realization, her pelvis stayed pressed against him. She almost felt too uncomfortable and awkward to ask.

“Are you... _ hard? _ ” Her upper lip curled. 

“And what if I am?” He almost seemed puzzled, the pressure on his throat releasing. He took a few gulps of bitter, coppery air before he spoke again. “I can’t believe this. How the hell were you gonna try and kill me when a  _ dick _ freaks you out?”

That almost stopped her. All those months of preparing for this, the hours spent perfecting that stupid pulse field so that she didn’t immediately pass out after--just to stop because he found some twisted arousal in getting...murdered? It seemed as though her grip might loosen entirely, before her hands clamped down again. No, it wouldn't all go to waste. She wouldn’t let this get in her way.

“ _ Eugh _ ,” she grunted, thumbs pressed back onto his throat. She pressed and so did he, unintentionally, against her sex as if she’d been grinding on him. Something throbbed faintly; must have been the suit, she insisted. She swallowed hard. The Aaron here in her hands, goading her into killing him, looked unhinged, raw, depraved.  _ Hot? _

_ Die, just die _ , the mantra repeated in her head, until an inappropriate and intruding thought broke her concentration:  _ how fucked up would it be to have sex with him through all this _ ? She felt sick at the idea, the kind she couldn’t shake. What on earth was  _ that _ thought? Right now? She blamed him for the distraction, but her back arched, legs opened a little wider. Her suit picked up mixed signals. It phased, but she couldn’t stop to check. She held her breath, as if she’d been the one choked.

“That’s….f...fucking disgusting.” She whispered harshly, to him or herself, it was unclear.

“So-“ Ares hardly had a moment to prepare a second quip before she resumed strangling him, and the feelings of desire replaced the air he was no longer getting. The tightness of her gloved fingers around his throat, the way she dug into his bruised and inflamed skin - she was stronger than she had been the last time they met, and he liked the kind of woman that could kick his ass.

But even as io sat straddled, he could tell her heart wasn’t in it. For all her screaming and shouting and ranting, all her crass bravado, the shifting and grinding of her hips indicated to him that io’s mind had wandered - and so had his.

It was better than thinking about dying.

The whispers in the back of Ares’ mind nagged him to strike while she was conflicted, take advantage of her distraction to turn the tables. On the other end of the spectrum his cock twitched aggressively against io, a prisoner fighting harder to be free than he was. For once, he ignored his ominous guiding thoughts and opted to keep his hazy eyes focused on her for as long as he could. 

Slowly, as he struggled to keep his eyes open amid the deadly assault, even the basic functions of the suit began to break down. Little by little the faint glow of crimson in his suit’s highlights faded, and the suit itself began to recede back into the implant along his spine.

She tried to stay focused. Her friends had believed in her to follow through. io had told herself that she wouldn’t hesitate when she had the opportunity to kill the universe's greatest current threat. She’d do it with quick professionalism.

So she didn’t have a good answer for why her suit partially receded at the groin, or why the arousal slicked him from the grinding on her bare folds, or  _ why she was wet in the first place _ . Her face was red, between anger and humiliated disgust. He wouldn’t say anything snarky about it. She’d make sure of that.

io squeezed harder and with an all too easy shift of her hips, she slid onto him. Last human she’d slept with on Earth, and the last in space.

_ “Nngh.” _ Pressure, of her hands around his throat and his cock buried inside her. She tried to pass off the grunts that escaped her lips. Her muscles contracted around him, her stare unrelenting as she asphyxiated this man she’d chased to the end of the universe. Cherry reds taunted  _ him _ this time, daring him to say something with a crushed windpipe.

His cocky, aggravating smile crept onto his lips. She had slipped - both physically and mentally. Given in. The humanity she had assumed was lost was brought right back, and was solidly inside of her now. Heaven was between his legs; an unusual but welcome guide to the other side.

_ Give in. _

His grip on life began to slip. His clenched fists loosened, his muscles lost the will to resist his inevitable demise. His vision was marred with sudden flashes of white, even as his eyes shut completely. All he could focus on was the pressure around his neck and cock, two disparate yet pleasurable sensations. The end was nigh.

_ Just a little longer _ . She snarled down at what she’d call a  _ peaceful _ expression, all things considered. He wasn’t fighting her anymore. His pulse beat wildly against her grip. It didn’t want to die, but Aaron himself was fading.

_ Let go _ . Conflicting thoughts distressed her. She fought them.  _ He will kill us all if I do _ . His suit receded entirely, revealing his bruised flesh. Purple and yellow splotches across his chest and up his neck looked like galaxies.

“Aaron.” A broken murmur left her, sounding far different from how she felt.

Silence.

His smiling snarl was frozen on his face like a goofy caricature. His hands lay limp against the ground, his body relaxed entirely. As his consciousness began to drift aimlessly Aaron’s body let out one last gasp for life - an orgasm for the ages.

The last of his air amounted to a sickly gurgle, but it was the only warning he could give before his cock erupted. The muscle did the work the rest of him couldn’t, violently tensing and throbbing against io’s walls as shot after shot of pent-up cum made a mad dash from his failing body.

After that...nothing. His body was still, rapidly softening after delivering its payload.

She released him. Her shaking hands froze mid air and tears pricked at her eyes. The spurts caught her attention, brought her back to her body...and off of his. She scrambled in fear suddenly, fear of the consequences she never had to worry about with an android lover. 

_ “Fuck!”  _ She cursed, hands over her eyes, on her scalp, through her hair. She stood over him, dripping his release, unable to do anything but breathe for a good solid few moments. Only questioning why it had to come to this. The suit reconstructed itself.

Her humanity kicked in the door. She crouched beside him and gingerly checked for a pulse. It felt more criminal than everything that preceded it, somehow. Her heart jumped. He was still alive. Unconscious and badly beat down, but alive.

She sat and crawled backwards, away from him. The job hadn’t been completed, but io no longer found it in herself to follow through.  _ Why?  _ She gulped, sniveling and wiping her eyes. Several times he almost succeeded in killing her, through taking back the spine implant, thrown into black hole trajectory, or otherwise. Several hard lessons she learned, to reconcile her attraction to someone inhuman while accepting that she  _ was _ just human. But as she looked at the bruises, the welts and scars and cauterized gashes that covered his skin, that unkillable human part of her cried for him. It didn't want to see him, or anyone else, hurting. He had done so much evil, but now he was just as fragile as the rest.

io eventually calmed herself down enough to move. She could leave now, but something told her not to yet. Nobody on the ship would understand the loneliness, and she wasn’t ready to answer their questions. She fumbled for the only first aid she had, an injection to stimulate rapid cell regeneration. It went into his thigh and she sighed. Once empty, she threw it across the floor.

Then she sat on the ground by the window, dead stare out to the stars beyond.

Ares violently thrashed and flailed as his internal wounds were stitched together bit by bit, cold air stinging the back of his throat as he swallowed massive gulps of air. The soothing numbness of the void disappeared in an instant as the medicine went to work, bringing Frankenstein back to life against his will.

The suit flared to life, his neon red glow illuminating the room. He sprang to his feet, ragged breathing filling the stillness of the room while his head whipped back and forth to scan his surroundings. What he hadn’t expected to find was io seated calmly, opposite the window and gazing into the stars.

His chest filled with air before he shuffled over to io’s side, flopping onto the ground and letting the air out.

“Is this hell? Or just the waiting room?” He asked with a confused sense of calm.

She didn’t turn her head, not when he thrashed nor as he sat down next to her. The only sound in her ears was his breath. She imagined it must be difficult for him, and the pit grew deeper in her stomach.

“I’d call it hell.” She exhaled too, through her nose, filling the silence with that rather than the words she wanted to say.  _ Why, why.  _ Loneliness worked that way, and the one person who probably understood it best was beside her, closest to death as he’d ever been since...well, she figured his own experimentation with Doomsday Alloy.  _ Sorry I almost killed you _ .

Tired io wordlessly laid her head on his shoulder. Her hand laid beside his on the cold ground.

“Feels like it.” He remarked with a murmur. He flinched when io laid her head on his shoulder, but made no attempts to move her. The gesture was unusually kind and gentle, and far removed from the attention he had received from io (or anyone else, as of late).

Words were difficult to find. His bruised throat was in no mood to cooperate in the name of making small talk with his ex. Each time he considered it the back of his throat jabbed him, the intake of cool air like swallowing tiny shards of glass. But he knew he had to say something. Even if she was going to leave and just resume their fighting later, he couldn’t allow her to walk away.

“Your lack of commitment’s gonna get you killed.” He croaked. The pain in his tone was evident, as well as a hint of concern. From one Earthling to another, in the name of old hatchets that were never really buried. “Follow through or don’t do it at all, io.”

She swallowed a lump in her throat. No words. Her hand creeped over his, fingers slipping into the spaces between his. Human to human. It could’ve been anyone, but he picked her. She stewed with acknowledgment that until one of them stopped breathing, the suits would bring them together again. It tormented her to watch him descend into madness without hope to change his course.

io’s empty gaze finally flicked down, away from the twinkling beyond. 

“I still have a few lucky stars left.” She said, and her eyes closed, her nose nuzzled into his shoulder. Tender maybe from an outsider’s perspective, but deeper than that. She missed her family, her friends, everybody in between. She’d never be able to kill him, not when he was one of the last legacies of the lost. 

“Why are we doing this?”

“It’s a clash of ideals, io. You got yours, and I got mine.” He stated coolly. His eyes fell onto their hands, then to the top of her head as she buried her face into his shoulder. Like an overnight blizzard sweeping through a valley the rage bubbling inside of him iced over, the nagging whispers in his mind silenced.

He hadn’t been this clear-headed since before he left Earth.

“I didn’t wanna kill anyone. Not to say that I regret it, but...we haven’t found a way to get the alloy from planet cores without ruining them. So...” The raspy words sounded uncertain as they left his throat, but he made no attempt to dispute their veracity. “I...look, io. Since I got the suit, I’ve been hearing things. They’ve been guiding me, but it’s been nothing but good I swear. They tell me that this stuff can reshape the universe.”

He exhaled sharply from his nose, briefly reconsidering digging so deeply before charging head first into uncharted waters. His heart thumped wildly against his chest - passion, excitement. Genuine excitement! A shaky smile crept onto his quivering lips, fingers starting to curl around hers.

“We can figure it out together, io. You and me. We can have the universe in our hands, and make it into whatever we want! Please, join me. I’ll be less violent or...whatever. Whatever it takes. I’d even accept your friends! Er...eventually. That’s a stretch. But I’m willing to try.”

It wasn’t long into his rambling that her eyes teared up, knowing with all her heart that whatever was happening to him, couldn't be undone, even if she  _ wanted _ to go with him. The guilt crushed her.

“I can’t,” she whispered, squeezing his hand. She thought of her crew, the people that had her back when the last of humanity turned on her. All was lost, but they were her family. And Rinzler…

She turned her gaze up, off his shoulder but still so close.

“Aaron...I can’t. You said there’s no way to get what you need unless you kill a planet and everything on it.” How he couldn’t see how vile it was, she struggled to understand. She could see his hope crescendo. “I can’t.”

“You can. You can!”

He turned toward her with a very human sense of desperation, the light in his eyes fading fast. He clasped his hands around hers, clinging to false hope.

“We can fix it all! If we can get enough of this stuff, the whispers said we can control reality itself! We can restore those planets and so much more! We could bring back Earth - a better Earth!”

He hopped to his feet, unashamed to be begging the enemy for her aid. She wasn’t  _ really _ the enemy, just a contrasting force. But surely she’d see reason, or at least he hoped.

“The universe is flawed, io. The whole thing. There’s so much pain and suffering, pollution - you name it, we could end it! Bend it all to our will and make sure that no one has to hurt again. I-I don’t understand how it works, but the whispers, they say it can be done and-“

“ _ No, _ ” she interrupted him, because the more he talked the more afraid she became. “You can’t… you can’t bring anything back. Or anyone.” Her lower lip quivered. She followed his lead and stood more slowly than he had. Breaking bad news and vocally going against the grain was never her strong suit.

“Isotech messed up.  _ You _ messed up. This is all we have now.” She gestured between the two of them, so different, but one and the same.  _ The fate of many held in the hands of the few _ . “ _ We’re _ all we have now. And the colony, but they've already been scattering. You knew that, didn’t you? That they started jumping ship long before the heads realized how bad everything was?”

She stood so close that she could see the freckles in his sunken green eyes. 

“There’s no ‘fixing’ anything with your plan. Not Earth, or humanity, or,” she winced, “whatever this is.”

Ares practically lunged on impulse, bringing his lips to io’s in a sudden fit of overwhelming emotions. Surely she missed him! Maybe she just forgot what it was that she’s losing, and a kiss would bring her to her senses like some sort of twisted fairytale.

The kiss was genuine from one end but not the other, io taking an uncomfortable step away from him in silence. She didn’t need to say anything for him to understand that much.

“Then…” His shoulders slouched, the wind now entirely out of his sails. His throat constricted. She was choking him all over again. “Then…”

The ice inside began to thaw and crack, the boiling anger clawing itself out of dormancy with a vengeance. His suit highlights burned brightly, filling the room with a dull red that seemed to ooze down the walls.

“I’ll do it myself. I’ll do it  _ all _ alone, and show you how wrong you are about this. About ME.” He grumbled, turning his back on io. “You gave up on me ages ago anyway. I know you did. And if I see you again…”

A tense silence fills the room. Ares didn’t move a muscle, but the faint _plip_ _plop_ of liquid hitting the metal floor replaced his words.

“I won’t hesitate.”


End file.
